Buying Options

Verizon offers the best coverage in the most places in the US, so you’re more likely than with other carriers to have a signal wherever you are—the most important thing for a smartphone to do. And though Verizon isn’t the least expensive carrier for unlimited-data plans, the company’s under-promoted single-line 5 GB plan (just $55 after an auto-pay discount) includes more data than most people need while saving you money compared with an unlimited plan. But if you truly need unlimited data, or frequently travel internationally, you should consider T-Mobile’s One Plus.

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Buying Options

If you need a lot of data more than you need the widest coverage, the T-Mobile One unlimited plan, augmented by the $15 One Plus add-on to enable full-speed tethering, is a well-priced plan (even after recent T-Mobile price hikes for One Plus) on a network that still provides pretty good coverage. T-Mobile’s network isn’t quite as good as Verizon’s—you’ll likely encounter more places where you can’t get a signal—but it’s still good, and third-party studies (for example, ones from PCMag and OpenSignal) report that a few years of upgrades have boosted T-Mobile above AT&T and Sprint. T-Mobile also bests Verizon in terms of international-roaming plans, and a wider variety of phones work on T-Mobile’s GSM network than Verizon’s CDMA network (though the best phones are available for both).

Buying Options

Between traditional subscription plans on the big four carriers, prepaid services, and companies reselling those four networks, you have hundreds of options for family plans, but the two-line rates of Metro by T-Mobile and the four-line deals of Verizon’s prepaid service come out on top. These plans each use one of the top two networks, let you bring your own devices (the best way to save money while still getting a quality phone), and offer conveniences like the capability to use your phone as a mobile hotspot and roam overseas without paying painful-to-extortionate extra fees.

Why you should trust me

I’ve covered the wireless industry since the late 1990s. (My first guide to cell phone service, written in 1998, devoted much ink to comparing analog and digital cellular.) I’ve tested smartphones and cell phone plans from all four major carriers for Boing Boing, CNN Money, Discovery News, PCMag, VentureBeat, The Washington Post, and others, and I now cover telecom-policy issues for Yahoo Finance (a subsidiary of Verizon’s media division Oath) and answer telecom questions in a USA Today Q&A column.

How we picked

We limited this guide to the most widely used national options—the big four and their prepaid services and subsidiaries, and TracFone and its Straight Talk and Net10 sibling brands—as well as services ranked in the top three in reader surveys from sites like PCMag. That left us with the following services:

TracFone and its Net10 and Straight Talk brands, which resell all four networks but will put you on whichever one it judges best for you.

For each service, we computed the cost of a few typical bundles of smartphone service, setting minimal use at 1 gigabyte (GB) of data, moderate use at 3 GB, and heavy use at 5 GB. (Research firms’ estimates have shown steady increases in average use since the first version of this guide, but usage estimates per carrier have also diverged as some carriers have switched to selling only unlimited-data subscriptions: In the second quarter of 2018, Strategy Analytics found that Android users who had opted into its survey used on average 5.9 GB on T-Mobile, 5 GB on Sprint, 4.5 GB on Verizon, and 3.9 GB on AT&T. However, usage outside of the big four can be lower, to judge from the much lower monthly average reported by the wireless trade group CTIA for 2017: only 1.3 GB.

Our cost estimates assume 400 voice minutes and 500 texts used per month. Those numbers fall roughly in the middle of usage data we saw from the Federal Communications Commission (PDF) and a 2013 PwC study (PDF), among other resources, but are above the much lower averages that CTIA reported for 2017 (187 voice minutes and 143 texts). Unlike postpaid services, many prepaid and resold services still limit your text messages and phone calls, so the actual cost of a particular carrier may be slightly more or less if you use more or fewer minutes and texts, respectively.

We also calculated the costs for two other situations: a minimal-talk scenario assuming 50 voice minutes, 500 texts, and 3 GB of data per month, and a Wi-Fi–first situation in which you use our typical voice and text amounts but rely on Wi-Fi for data.

We then redid all of the above math for family plans with multiple lines for two and four people.

Our estimates included only sales and discounts without expiration dates (though we included plans with “for a limited time” vagueness) and that are open to any customer (those that require trading in a phone or porting over a number didn’t qualify). If a plan offers a lower rate for automatic payments, we factored that discount in. We also allowed for regular purchases of an extra data pack or per-megabyte overage fees of $15 a gigabyte or less, but only up to $30 a month.

Some prepaid services offer service in only 30-day increments; to avoid a punitive level of math, we treated that as a month in our calculations.

Finally, we didn’t factor in taxes and regulatory fees, because they vary by jurisdiction (on my own T-Mobile plan, for example, these fees added up to just under 10 percent of my July 2018 bill). But wherever you live, taxes and fees should hit you equally across all of your options—except for T-Mobile’s T-Mobile One offering, which sweeps them into the advertised cost.

Buying Options

Verizon is the nation’s largest carrier for good reason: It offers the best coverage in the most places in the US according to third-party tests and surveys (including those of PCMag and RootMetrics), so you’re more likely to have a signal no matter where you are, and its pricing is competitive with that of AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile for the amount of data that most people actually use. It isn’t the best choice for people who frequently travel outside of the US or who want unlimited data, but it is the first carrier everyone else should look at.

Verizon’s best plan for most people is also its least obvious offering: the 5 GB for $55 deal. It’s difficult to find this plan on Verizon’s homepage, but you should see this option if you select a phone, add it to your cart, and scroll past Verizon’s flagship “unlimited” offerings when selecting a plan. (Verizon’s website quotes a $60 rate for this plan, but signing up for auto-pay using a checking account or debit card gets you $5 off—though this precludes running up points on a travel-rewards credit card).

Verizon’s 5 GB pricing barely beats that of T-Mobile and Sprint’s unlimited plans, but those two carriers’ options (and even Verizon’s own $75 Go Unlimited plan) limit what you can do with that data in ways that Verizon’s plan does not—most notably, by limiting streaming video to DVD resolution and limiting either the speed or the volume of hotspot use. This 5 GB plan includes full-speed mobile hotspot use and allows HD streaming video, albeit capped at 720p resolution on phones and 1080p on tablets. (That streaming video limit remains undocumented as of August 2018 outside of a brief mention in the second-to-last paragraph of a press release.) So as long as you—like a large chunk of the wireless population—don’t use more than 5 GB in a month, Verizon’s continued network advantage still makes this plan a good deal.

Prices and plans are current as of August 24, 2018. For T-Mobile One, HD video and LTE hotspot cost $15 extra.

Verizon offers discounts on all plans, including this one, to employees and members of designated companies and organizations, but only its military and veterans discount applies to unlimited plans.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Verizon’s CDMA-based network (used when you don’t have LTE service) isn’t capable of simultaneous voice and data use. This means, for instance, that if you’re using your phone to navigate while you’re driving, and you get a voice call in an area without 4G service, you may lose the call. But the company’s far-flung LTE deployment has addressed this limitation in many areas.

Verizon has a reputation for taking a long time to push out software updates for its phones, but its performance with Google’s Android 8.0 Oreo update shows improvement. That said, you don’t have to buy your phone from Verizon as long as the model you get supports its network, so you can choose a phone that gets quick updates. Most unlocked phones, including iPhones, Google’s Pixel handsets, and some Samsung phones, are all compatible with Verizon nowadays. Though as you can see at Will My Phone Work, this group excludes GSM-only phones like the Nokia 6.1, our pick for the best budget Android phone, as well as some LTE models with limited frequency support, such as OnePlus’s Android phones.

For unlimited data and international roaming: T-Mobile One Plus

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Buying Options

If you use more than 5 GB of mobile data most months, if you travel outside the country regularly, or if you want the greatest variety of phone choices, you should consider T-Mobile One Plus. This plan combines T-Mobile One, the carrier’s standard $70 subscription plan with the $15 T-Mobile One Plus add-on (which adds HD streaming video and LTE mobile hotspot speeds and ups T-Mobile’s included Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi from one hour per flight to unlimited.) At $85 per month, T-Mobile One Plus beats Verizon’s $85 Beyond Unlimited plan once you account for the taxes and fees that Verizon doesn’t list but T-Mobile folds into that total—and T-Mobile offers a wider choice of phones and delivers much better international-roaming options. Like its competitors, T-Mobile does reserve the right to “deprioritize” your data above a certain threshold, but it now sets this “soft cap” at 50 GB a month—more than twice that of AT&T and Verizon.

Verizon’s network is still better than T-Mobile’s, but that advantage is less pronounced for data. Automated drive testing by the research firm RootMetrics that rate T-Mobile poorly include lagging grades for voice and text use, while they show T-Mobile as a respectable third place for speed and data. PCMag currently ranks T-Mobile as a very close second to Verizon, while OpenSignal’s test results say that T-Mobile is now actually ahead of Verizon in speed and data. And though T-Mobile’s GSM-based network—which lets you talk and use data simultaneously, unlike Verizon’s—has historically leaned on higher-frequency bands that don’t reach as far inside buildings, that’s getting better. That GSM foundation also means that T-Mobile is compatible with more phones than Verizon is, including virtually every unlocked phone you can buy.

Frequent travelers will find other bonuses in T-Mobile’s unlimited plan. It includes international roaming, and although One Plus limits that roaming to 256 Kbps speeds, I’ve found it to be more than adequate for email and basic browsing. You also get free texting, 25¢-per-minute calling, and the ability to use your phone in Canada or Mexico with no roaming charges, even for LTE.

Two-line family plan: Metro by T-Mobile

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Buying Options

Due to constantly shifting promotions and terms, family-plan pricing is difficult to sort through. Our Verizon single-line pick isn’t competitive here because all of the lines on a Verizon subscription share the same data bucket. Verizon’s largest capped-data option is 8 GB, so if that won’t cover your family’s usage, you have to upgrade to more expensive unlimited data plans: $130 for two lines of not-so-versatile Go Unlimited and its limits on mobile-hotspot and streaming-video use ($160 for Beyond Unlimited), or $160 for four lines of Go Unlimited ($200 for four lines of Beyond Unlimited).

Excluding plans that don’t let you bring your own device, Metro by T-Mobile, formerly MetroPCS, has the best rates for two-line scenarios—$70 for 5 GB each on two phones. That pricing easily beats T-Mobile’s own prepaid plans, and Metro by T-Mobile's data caps exempt streaming video (at the cost of limiting its resolution to DVD-quality 480p resolution, although you can opt out of this Data Maximizer feature if you want).

Four-line family plan: Verizon Prepaid

Budget pick

Buying Options

Among services that let you bring your own phone, Verizon Prepaid provides the best deals for four lines, thanks to generous multiple-line discounts on its 3 and 7 GB (per line) plans that drop those four-line costs to $100 and $125, respectively. The only exception is the least appealing data amount: four lines with 1 GB each, where AT&T Prepaid is cheapest at $90 a month. Cricket offers more data in our medium-usage scenario—$110 buys you 5 GB per line—but that comes with an 8 Mbps speed limit and no hotspot support.

The best prepaid plan: Verizon Prepaid

Budget pick

Buying Options

If you’d like to save some money with a prepaid or resold plan (we talk about the differences below), we like Verizon Prepaid, which costs about a third less than Verizon’s postpaid service for a 7 GB plan ($50) on the same excellent network. As with Verizon’s postpaid plans, you’ll still get unlimited 2G data after you hit your plan’s data cap, but Verizon Prepaid bests the company’s postpaid plans in one way: It doesn’t limit streaming video speed. However, the prepaid plans don’t include calling and texting to Canada and Mexico unless you upgrade to the 10 GB plan or buy the international-roaming TravelPass at the postpaid rate.

AT&T’s prepaid service and Cricket Wireless offer comparable savings, as do T-Mobile’s in-house prepaid service and its Metro by T-Mobile subsidiary, but those networks aren’t as good as Verizon’s and their prepaid plans aren’t as good for world travelers. Sprint’s Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA in-house brands are even worse for limiting the ability to bring your own phone.

If Verizon’s network doesn’t work well in your area, or if you don’t use a lot of data and are looking for a cheaper plan with great customer support, you should also consider Consumer Cellular or Ting.

Buying Options

If you need quality voice and text coverage but use little or no data, and you’re willing to stick to a small, if growing, subset of Android phones, Republic Wireless is the best bet. At just $15 a month, it’s the cheapest way to get unlimited voice and texts, and adding 1 GB of data (with hotspot support) on the Sprint and T-Mobile networks tacks on another $5.

How to determine which network has the best coverage for you

Selecting a network is the trickiest part of picking a plan. Coverage can vary from block to block or even building to building, so carrier coverage maps can be a good starting point only if you can zoom in to the street level—and even then they say nothing about how the network fares in areas with many devices using it. OpenSignal, PCMag, and RootMetrics all publish independently sourced network-performance metrics, but those studies take different approaches and are thus good for different purposes. (When using these metrics, and a carrier’s own coverage maps, don’t forget to check a network’s coverage in frequent business or vacation destinations.)

RootMetrics uses cars set up with “leading Android-based smartphones for each network” to gather figures on data, talk, and text performance throughout the country. Its coverage map encompasses basically every major US city street, boulevard, and highway, as well as all of the towns and thoroughfares that connect them. You can also get reports tailored to specific metropolitan areas. This amount of detail makes RootMetrics a great source for gauging overall performance by region.

PCMag takes a similar approach but focuses more specifically on network data speed and reliability. The majority of those efforts, however, focus on metropolitan centers and suburbs, leaving entire states out of the analysis (sorry, South Dakota!).

OpenSignal has complete coverage data in densely populated areas like New York City ...

OpenSignal has complete coverage data in densely populated areas like New York City ...

... but spottier coverage in less dense, suburban areas such as Berryville, Virginia.

OpenSignal has complete coverage data in densely populated areas like New York City ...

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OpenSignal’s network tests rely on crowdsourcing: Anyone can download the OpenSignal app and run tests. But that also means anyone can opt not to do so—and the majority of people don’t. As such, OpenSignal’s data skews heavily toward densely populated, urban areas. The upside is that in those regions, it has block-by-block information. If you live in a city, you can use OpenSignal’s data to check all the spots you frequent.

How much data do you need?

Once you’ve determined which network will work best for you, the next step is to figure out how much you actually use data, voice, and texting.

The best way to see how much data you’re using is to check with your carrier, either through its website or through its app. Both Android and iOS provide estimates of your current data use, and those numbers can be useful if you’re trying to see which of your apps use the most data, but your carrier’s website will give you a more accurate, reliable number (and that’s the number that it’ll use when calculating your bill, anyway).

If your usage only slightly exceeds the cap on a service’s limited-data plans—say, you use 3.25 GB in a month and your carrier offers a 3 GB plan—you should see if that plan lets you roll over unused data from months when you don’t hit your maximum. Also, see if that service offers unmetered slow 2G service once you exhaust your high-speed data, so your phone will still always get basic (read: slower) Internet access. These features may let you choose a less expensive plan.

The other option is an unlimited-data plan, but these aren’t truly unlimited: All four carriers have carved out restrictions on things like hotspot use and streaming video, while adding premium tiers or for-fee add-ons that lift some of those limits. As a result, shopping for wireless service can look a lot like buying a plane ticket: You can’t jump on the cheapest price you see, lest you wind up in Basic Economy.

Among the basic-economy, entry-level versions of unlimited data, Sprint deserves some credit for requiring the fewest compromises beyond the streaming-video 480p resolution enforced by all four: Sprint’s Unlimited Basic, $60 for one line, still includes 500 MB of LTE hotspot use (more than I use in most months) and overseas roaming (though at slower speeds). T-Mobile Essentials, at $60, offers only free texting overseas—international voice and data are extra—and limits hotspot use to 3G speeds (although OpenSignal rated its 3G downloads highest among all four). Verizon’s $75 Go Unlimited caps hotspot use at a punitive 600 Kbps, while AT&T’s $75 Unlimited & More bans hotspot use outright.

As for talk and text amounts, all of the postpaid plans from the major carriers provide unlimited calling and messaging, so in theory you don’t even have to compute those numbers. But many prepaid and resold services allow you to save money if you’re willing to stay within certain limits. The best way to figure out how many texts or calls you send or make is to consult your billing statement.

You can use WhistleOut’s comparison tool to search for cell phone plans that meet your specific criteria. But be sure to skip past the featured (sponsored) results and to try at least a few combinations of usage.

If your usage doesn’t fall into our specific categories, you can do your own calculations using WhistleOut’s carrier-comparison tool. It even lets you filter by network, so you can ask it for only, say, prepaid options that resell AT&T service. But this comparison tool requires careful reading: Like Google searches, it shows featured (aka, sponsored) results before organic ones. It also includes far more services than we cover here and shows not just plans with the required amount of data/minutes/texts but also those that exceed your needs, producing a cluttered presentation overall.

Should you buy postpaid or prepaid/resold service?

If you want unlimited calls and texts, more attentive customer service, and phone financing through your carrier, you should stick with a traditional postpaid plan, where you get a bill for service after you use it. Postpaid costs a bit more and requires decent credit to qualify, but it offers you every phone the carrier sells, usually with no-interest financing, and the service you get should match what you see in the carrier’s ads.

However, switching to prepaid, where you pay for service before you use it, can be an easy way to save $10 to $20 a month or more. Many prepaid services are provided by smaller companies that simply resell service from one of the big carriers, so they offer similar coverage as those carriers at a lower price. But for these resellers to undersell the major carriers while using those carrier networks, the resellers make some trade-offs; similarly, the major carriers’ own prepaid plans tend to involve restrictions their postpaid plans lack. We don’t recommend switching to prepaid unless you meet most of these criteria:

You don’t use more than 5 GB of data per month—above that level, many prepaid plans cost more than their postpaid equivalents.

You’re willing to forego unlimited calls and texts in favor of saving some money.

You’re okay with potentially being on your own if you have to work through service hiccups or tech-support travails. Retail support may not be an option, and phone or online support may be limited.

You’re willing to read the fine print. As analyst Jeffrey Moore advised us, data roaming, and sometimes even voice roaming, may not be included in some prepaid plans. These plans may also omit Wi-Fi calling, one common way to get around holes in coverage.

For many people, switching to prepaid can be an easy way to save $10 to $20 a month or more.

Some carriers throttle prepaid service to a lower speed by default, as AT&T does with Cricket. Others prioritize their own customers over third-party prepaid traffic, as happens with the Metro by T-Mobile subsidiary. A T-Mobile spokesperson confirmed that policy, saying that although postpaid and prepaid T-Mobile service have the same priority, Metro by T-Mobile and other resellers “may notice slower speeds in times of network congestion.” However, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon told us that they didn’t impose any such prioritization, and one reseller of Sprint and T-Mobile told us that even T-Mobile’s policy had yet to show any effects. “We have done our own testing,” Ting marketing vice president Michael Goldstein wrote in an email. “We have never detected any difference.”

Many of the factors that make prepaid service appealing favor an advanced user who doesn’t mind buying a phone and then picking a carrier, rather than buying a phone from their carrier. Unfortunately, these people are also likely to use more data than many prepaid services offer at reasonable prices.

What to look forward to

Metro by T-Mobile is also introducing two new unlimited plans. One of the plans starts at $50 for a single line and includes unlimited LTE data and Google One cloud storage. The other unlimited plan starts at $60 and includes 15 GB LTE mobile hotspot, unlimited LTE data, Google One cloud storage and an Amazon Prime subscription.

T-Mobile’s coverage has improved considerably over the past three years, and over the past two years, Sprint’s has progressed as well; we expect further improvements as the carriers upgrade their networks. Those two carriers should also be deploying more lower-frequency spectrum, either purchased or “refarmed” from older services, which ought to improve their problematic indoor reach.

5G wireless—which should offer much faster and more responsive connections—is coming, but not soon. For example, Verizon and AT&T began pre-commercial 5G trials last year, but those were limited to “fixed wireless” systems that provide whole-home bandwidth. Don’t expect widespread commercial deployment of mobile 5G during the real-world lifespan of any phone you buy today. We will, however, continue watching for early signs of each carrier’s 5G rollout.

Look for more tie-in deals from the carriers that throw in one video service or another, along the lines of T-Mobile’s free Netflix subscription with two-line plans, Sprint’s Hulu deal, AT&T’s WatchTV bundle, and Verizon’s $20 discount on a bundle of unlimited wireless and a triple-play of Fios Internet, phone, and TV service. (These media tie-ins are essentially another way carriers try to keep you around without the handcuffs of two-year contracts. Watch for new-lease or early-upgrade deals, but treat them with a fair amount of skepticism; buying your phone independent of service gives you far more leverage.)

Wireless resellers keep going into business, some with exceptionally attractive pricing. If such new entrants as Mint Mobile (which offers 10 GB of LTE for as little as $25 a month) get near the top of PCMag’s readers-choice list, we’ll add them to this survey.

Voice-call quality has improved as three of the four carriers (Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T) have built out Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service and made it interoperable. (Sprint doesn’t plan to begin its VoLTE rollout until this fall.) And across the board, data caps have risen to reflect customers’ increased demand for data: All four major US carriers now offer unlimited data plans and have refrained from curtailing them since T-Mobile and Verizon’s late-2017 pruning of their unmetered deals.

The competition

Verizon’s “unlimited” plans

We’re not fond of Verizon’s unlimited plans, none of which (as I’ve observed elsewhere) are truly limitless. For example, in addition to banning HD-video streaming and knee-capping mobile-hotspot speeds, the $75 Go Unlimited plan may throttle your speeds “in times of congestion,” even at the start of a billing cycle before you’ve burned up any data yourself—the others spot you 22 or 75 GB of usage before subjecting you to that risk. And as with the 5 GB plan, the $75 price requires enabling automatic payments from a checking account or debit card; otherwise it’s $5 more. Unlike Verizon’s capped plans, which give you full-speed data when roaming, the unlimited plan offers only 2G domestic data roaming, which one reader complained about while noting his experience roaming in Alaska and Puerto Rico. And the unlimited plans exclude all of Verizon’s discounts except for those for active military and veterans.

Verizon’s $85 Beyond Unlimited plan allows higher-definition video—720p resolution on phones, 1080p on tablets—and 15 GB of LTE tethering. But it imposes the same auto-pay requirements to avoid sending your pre-tax-and-fees bill to $100. The company’s $95 Above Unlimited plan caters to frequent travelers with a 20 GB LTE tethering allotment and five free one-day international roaming Travel Passes each month. It also raises the deprioritization threshold to 75 GB and throws in 500 GB of Verizon cloud storage, but still limits video streaming to 720p.

AT&T

AT&T, the second-largest carrier, offers a strong GSM network—allowing simultaneous voice and data use even outside LTE territory—and good in-building coverage via its widespread low-band spectrum. But its unlimited-data subscription rates aren’t as attractive, especially for multiple lines—its capped Mobile Share Flex plans will better suit most people’s needs. Buying your phone on AT&T’s installment plan brings an extra risk: Until you’ve paid it off, the device will be locked and stuck with unfavorable international-roaming charges. And though AT&T’s $10 International Day Pass matches Verizon’s pricing, it isn’t available in as many countries (PDF) as Verizon’s option or AT&T’s much more expensive Passport roaming.

AT&T’s $80 Unlimited & More Premium plan gets you 15 GB hotspot use and HD video for $5 less than Verizon’s Beyond Unlimited rate, but its network trails T-Mobile’s in OpenSignal’s and PCMag’s studies. And we don’t think anyone should get its $70-per-month, no-hotspot-allowed Unlimited & More option. Like Verizon, it requires automatic payments for you to get its advertised prices but won’t let you make those on a credit card, and it disqualifies all of its discounts except its military/veterans deal from that plan.

Having spent lavishly to buy DirecTV and Time Warner, AT&T now makes streaming video a big part of its sales pitch: Both unlimited plans include its 30-channel WatchTV service, and its $80 Unlimited &More Premium lets you add one of seven streaming-media freebies that include HBO and Showtime.

AT&T’s self-branded prepaid service offers a great deal for single-line, data-hungry users: 8 GB for $40 after a $10 auto-pay credit. But most people don’t use that much data, AT&T’s network isn’t as good, and if you travel beyond Canada and Mexico, where roaming is free, this plan offers no international roaming-data options at all.

Cricket, AT&T’s separate prepaid brand, was a former pick for four-line prepaid service. But that required accepting an 8 Mbps speed limit that’s now well below what LTE networks deliver in real-world tests, and a ban on mobile-hotspot use unless you opt for an 8 GB plan and pay $10 extra for that privilege.

Google Fi

Google Fi, the company’s wireless service, resells the networks of Sprint, T-Mobile, and the regional carrier U.S. Cellular. It’s not bad for frequent international travelers—we liked its rates and LTE roaming better than T-Mobile’s—but it offers full support only for Google’s Pixel series of phones as well as some LG and Motorola models. Fi now offers limited support for iPhones, but getting texts from non-iPhones requires some fiddling around in settings, you won’t get iOS’s visual voicemail feature, and you won’t be able to use a VPN. If your passport has dozens of stamps and your current or desired phone is on its list, though, Fi is worth a look.

Sprint

After the distraction of two self-inflicted wounds (a doomed purchase of its smaller competitor Nextel, followed by the wrong choice of 4G technology before a belated pivot to LTE), Sprint is finally making substantial progress with its network. If its coverage works for you, its pricing is almost as cheap as that of many prepaid and MVNO services but provides higher data allotments—and Sprint’s incentives to customers who bring numbers from other carriers allow even greater savings. However, as with Verizon, its CDMA technology permits simultaneous voice and data only if you’re on LTE.

Sprint offers cheaper pricing than T-Mobile for unlimited data—$60 for one line, $120 for four through January 2021—but those prices for its Unlimited Basic offering don’t include taxes and involve a bigger compromise in network quality, plus a 500 MB cap on mobile hotspot use and only standard-def streaming.

Sprint is particularly confusing because of its frequent shifts in price plans—like Sam-I-Am in Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, it’s always got a new marketing angle. We don’t mind that Sprint has adopted a similar approach to T-Mobile One, leaning heavily on unlimited data and free global roaming. But we’re not so keen on Sprint pushing phone-leasing deals that tout the same low up-front costs as the subsidized handset prices that tied customers to two-year contracts. Even if you upgrade every year, those deals offer little or no advantage over reselling a used phone and plowing the proceeds into buying a new model. And unlike Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, leasing keeps the phone locked to Sprint. Finally, Sprint doesn’t offer installment-plan pricing. To buy a phone from Sprint instead of signing a lease contract, you have to pay the full up-front price yourself.

We also can’t endorse this carrier’s prepaid options: Sprint Forward, Boost Mobile, and Virgin Mobile USA. All limit or ban the ability to bring your own device. That’s especially likely to hurt Android users, because the best Android phones rarely land on the approved “BYOD” lists of prepaid services.

Consumer Cellular

If Verizon doesn’t cover your most frequented locations—or if you simply want a slightly cheaper option to postpaid service but don’t want to sacrifice customer support—Consumer Cellular is a great alternative. This reseller of AT&T and T-Mobile consistently tops customer surveys such as Consumer Reports’s latest, PCMag’s annual survey and J.D. Power’s most recent “wireless purchase experience” study. The service is marketed to seniors, but the things that make it good for seniors make it good for most people as well. Most important, it offers US-based phone support that caters to the non-tech-savvy and maintains an in-store presence in major retailers such as Target. We also like that it allows you to specify an AT&T or T-Mobile SIM, whereas many other prepaid carriers, such as TracFone, will determine that for you unless you buy a SIM card in person.

Consumer Cellular’s prices aren’t quite as low as those of other resellers, but the company offers major savings in lower data-usage situations—the service is $15 to $30 cheaper if you expect to use 3 GB or less a month. Infrequent callers can get further savings by choosing one of Consumer Cellular’s lower voice allotments. And as the website reminds visitors, the company offers a 5 percent AARP discount. It blocks tethering by default but will enable that feature if you ask. And Consumer Cellular offers installment-plan purchase options with roughly the same terms as the majors do.

Ting

Assuming you make fewer calls than average, and you don’t need Verizon’s better network, Ting offers flexible billing and a choice of Sprint and T-Mobile coverage. Ting consistently ranks high in Consumer Reports reader surveys and placed well in past PCMag surveys (although it faded in that site’s latest round of reader assessments). And with Ting’s recent addition of third-party device financing, you can even have some of the same low up-front phone costs as with the big four.

TracFone/Net10/Straight Talk

TracFone, Net10, and Straight Talk, all properties of the Mexican carrier América Móvil, consistently rank among the most widely used prepaid services. They offer the advantage of reselling service from all four carriers, at the cost of having to trust the company’s judgment about which network works bests for you, as Prepaid Phone News editor Dennis Bournique explains in a helpful post.

But all three services ban hotspot use, a tight-fisted restriction that looks increasingly archaic even for prepaid. TracFone also suffers from its own math: Because the data allotments in its data/voice/message bundled plans are so stingy, we could meet our usage scenarios only by stacking these plans on top of each other, and in some cases then buying additional data packs.